Summary
The current global human crisis in climate, health and energy calls for the development of new biotechnological innovations. The engineering of living cells has demonstrated its efficiency to produce drugs or degrade pollutants, but living cells also come with major limitations. Synthetic cells are human-made robust micro-compartments that reproduce key features of living cells from non-living matter, and are now being engineered to tackle key societal challenges of the European Union, including environmental clean-up, energy production or drug delivery. The integration of multiple functional modules in a single synthetic cell, required to perform complex tasks, remains yet a grand challenge. A promising alternative to increase the functionality of synthetic cells is to distribute multiple functions into specialized compartments able to communicate with each other through chemical signaling to perform tasks collectively. However, chemical communication between synthetic cells remains poorly controllable and programmable. The aim of this proposal is to develop a new platform to quantitatively study chemical signalling between synthetic cells based on their dynamic clustering. For this purpose, we will engineer switchable sticky coacervate droplets to selective interact with enzymatically active vesicles and promote their reversible clustering in response to light or pH. The bottom-up assembly of vesicles will be achieved by microfluidics due to modularity and reliability to produce structurally well-defined architectures. Optical tweezers will be used to study the coacervate-mediated interactions between vesicles and quantify their chemical signalling via confocal fluorescence microscopy and spectroscopy. The skills and experience of the candidate in stimuli-responsive biomaterials, polymer coatings and adhesion will be applied to the interdisciplinary and cutting-edge fields of synthetic cells in which the hosting groups have made progress in the recent past.
Unfold all
/
Fold all
More information & hyperlinks
| Web resources: | https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101153428 |
| Start date: | 01-01-2025 |
| End date: | 31-12-2026 |
| Total budget - Public funding: | - 211 754,00 Euro |
Cordis data
Original description
The current global human crisis in climate, health and energy calls for the development of new biotechnological innovations. The engineering of living cells has demonstrated its efficiency to produce drugs or degrade pollutants, but living cells also come with major limitations. Synthetic cells are human-made robust micro-compartments that reproduce key features of living cells from non-living matter, and are now being engineered to tackle key societal challenges of the European Union, including environmental clean-up, energy production or drug delivery. The integration of multiple functional modules in a single synthetic cell, required to perform complex tasks, remains yet a grand challenge. A promising alternative to increase the functionality of synthetic cells is to distribute multiple functions into specialized compartments able to communicate with each other through chemical signaling to perform tasks collectively. However, chemical communication between synthetic cells remains poorly controllable and programmable. The aim of this proposal is to develop a new platform to quantitatively study chemical signalling between synthetic cells based on their dynamic clustering. For this purpose, we will engineer switchable sticky coacervate droplets to selective interact with enzymatically active vesicles and promote their reversible clustering in response to light or pH. The bottom-up assembly of vesicles will be achieved by microfluidics due to modularity and reliability to produce structurally well-defined architectures. Optical tweezers will be used to study the coacervate-mediated interactions between vesicles and quantify their chemical signalling via confocal fluorescence microscopy and spectroscopy. The skills and experience of the candidate in stimuli-responsive biomaterials, polymer coatings and adhesion will be applied to the interdisciplinary and cutting-edge fields of synthetic cells in which the hosting groups have made progress in the recent past.Status
SIGNEDCall topic
HORIZON-MSCA-2023-PF-01-01Update Date
24-11-2024
Images
No images available.
Geographical location(s)
